


Like Shooting Stars

by sullacat



Series: Taking Chances [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Community: schmoop_bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-20
Updated: 2011-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-20 14:17:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullacat/pseuds/sullacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk wants to make a good day even better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Shooting Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Schmoop Bingo card - Wild card: Unexpected date.; These characters are not mine, no infringement intended.

"Where you going?"

Bones snorted, grabbing his satchel and slowly heading for the simulator door. "After that little display of yours? I'm going home." He gave Jim a little wave, and added, "I'll see you tomorrow."

"The fuck you are." Jim jogged after him, grabbing his jacket as he ran past the still-shocked instructors. Everyone knew that no one ever beat the Kobayashi Maru - at least, not until today. This was going to make him a legend. "We're celebrating," he beamed.

"No," Bones retorted, still walking down the hall until his hand hit the door and they both squinted in the late afternoon sun. "You're celebrating. Look, its been a long day, and I'm tired." Bones had agreed to sit at Science station for the test, but Jim hadn't anticipated it taking so much time out of their day. One by one, they'd watched as others entered the simulator only to leave afterward looking dejected and angry.

Jim had been the last of the day, and Bones had waited with him, but now? Bones was leaving. " _I'm_ going to get to bed early, got an important practicum tomorrow."

"No, no- hey," Jim said, grabbing his arm, stopping him. "Look, come on. I wanna celebrate." Looking around, they could both see that everyone else was gone, or leaving, or throwing daggers with their eyes at Jim. "Dinner, just come eat with me." Jim could hear the edge of desperation in his voice, and pushed it back. Not like he couldn't get someone else to spend time with him, but right now, he didn't want just _anyone_ around. "Look, I know I wasted your time today, but... I'll leave you alone after that, I promise."

Jim didn't want to think that Bones heard that desperation, but the slight drop in his friend's shoulders answered for him, and Bones turned, sighed, gave Jim that look before following him toward the parking lot. They jumped on Jim's bike and headed for Chinatown, to that little hole-in-the-wall place they frequented well enough not need any menus. "So, what do ya think?" Jim said, waving at the owners and dropping into a booth in the back.

Bones was quiet for a little longer as he settled across from Jim. "I think you're a goddamn genius," he said after a while. "Or just damned lucky." He leaned in, his voice dropping. "How the hell did you get that done, Jim?" he asked, his face more curious than gruff now.

Jim leaned back, accepting the beer that the waitress brought them, a little smile dropping from his lips before he finally spoke. "The programming wasn't perfect."

"You busted into the code?" Bones looked vaguely impressed.

"Something like that..."

"They're not gonna like that."

"I passed their test," Jim retorted. "I fulfilled the requirements." Jim knew something wasn't completely kosher with his method, and a part of him was truly sorry for what was going to happen once they discovered Gaila's involvement, but... wasn't that what they talked about in Tactics classes? Looking outside the box? Finding the answer for the impossible problem? Fuck, that's what he did...

But he couldn't explain this to Bones right now, and fuck, he didn't want to. Right now, he wanted to sit back, enjoy some orange chicken and beer and celebrate the fact that he'd done the impossible. They could yell at him tomorrow. Right now, he won.

Food arrived, and Bones still wasn't talking. "You don't seem chatty."

"Been a long day," Bones told him, digging into his own plate. He had that look on his face, the one he got when there was a patient in trouble, and Jim was both touched and irritated by it.

"Don't worry 'bout me," Jim said, tossing a piece of rice at him with his chopstick. Bones gruffed up, a sign things were returning to normal. "What practicum you got tomorrow?" Jim asked.

"Androrian physiology. Fuck if I can't get them straight in my head," Bones said with a chuckle, poking at his food with his fork.

"Need some help?" Jim asked through a mouth full of noodles.

"Naw, just gotta sit down and study. Not all of us are geniuses like you," he said, an often-repeated saying of his. Jim rolled his eyes like he always did. Bones was plenty smart, the country-boy facade hiding some serious medical knowledge. But it seemed easier for him to pretend like he wasn't special.

Jim spent a long time wondering how to break that, and after three years, he wasn't any closer to figuring that out than he was when they met.

Maybe he could do that tonight.

"You done?" Jim asked when they'd both cleaned their plates.

"Yeah," Bones told him, wiping his mouth off and finishing his beer. They got back on the cycle and headed not toward the Academy grounds, but toward Golden Gate Park. He could hear Bones chuckling behind him. "Jim..."

"Okay, so I lied," he called back to Bones, behind him. "One hour more, that's all I want." Jim pulled into a spot under a tree and parked the cycle, waited for Bones to get off and then started walking toward his favorite spot, where he could see the water and the bridge. It was a pretty enough night, Jim thought, warm enough that it was a sin to spend it studying in a room. He flopped gracefully on the ground, taking off his jacket and tossing it next to him. "Tell me about Andorians."

Bones sat down next to Jim, stretching his legs out in front of him. "...I know what you're doing," he said, after a minute. "You don't-"

"Come on, talk to me. Tell me about how they work."

Bones gave him that look - the one that he aimed at Jim often, but right now, Jim was shooting his own look right back - it was just a matter of who gave in first. A few moments past before the doctor looked away, silently surrendering. "Well, you know about the antennae, right?" Before too long Jim had listened to Bones go through the finer points of supercranial antennae positioning and its relevance in Andorian health. He stumbled through some of the language, but Jim was able to help with a few of the words, taught him the proper inflection, which somehow seemed to help a bit.

"I don't see what you're worried about. You know this stuff," Jim finally told him as darkness settled around them, one by one the sky filling with stars. "You wanna know what you're problem is?" Jim tapped Bones on the head. "You've decided that these guys are hard to learn, so you've made them hard. You do this, all the time, psych yourself out when its not that big a deal." He nudged him with his foot. "Just like the zero-G survival class." _Or anything to do with flying,_ Jim thought to himself.

Bones sighed, a deep breath as he focused on the water in the distance. "You might be right... I mean, even the fucking Ferengi were easier for me to get than these guys. I just can't wrap my head around the vocabulary," Bones shook his head, chuckling to himself, "not to mention the whole gender issue."

At least this was something Jim knew a little about, having researched this once before. "So, let's talk about sex."

Bones snorted again. "That some proposition, 'cause you bought dinner?" Bones lay down, laughing at his own joke. "I'm not that easy"

Jim laughed at that, because it wasn't what he meant, for once, and because it was just so Bones. Dry and droll and fuck if he didn't know how to keep him on his toes but he did. Maybe it was a Georgia boy thing, but Bones never bored him. "Don't I know that...been trying for years with you."

Something changed on Bones' face, something more serious. A little sad. After a while he finally said, "Jim, you know I can't..."

Jim looked over at him, his face turning so fast it almost hurt. "What do you mean, you can't?" Bones had turned down his offers before, but never- never like that.

"I- fuck. C'mon, Jim, you know what I mean. We're friends, Jim. Best friends." Bones exhaled loudly, looking uncomfortable. "Fucking... it would just fuck things up between us."

Jim knew this, knew the rationale behind the words, wasn't completely surprised. Still hurt, though. "So- if it wouldn't fuck things up, you'd do it?"

"What?" Bones asked, looking up.

"I mean, you not being with me, its not like you think I'm-" _Worthless? Disgusting?_ Why did he even want to know?

Bones just looked at him like he was crazy. "What, you think you're ugly or something? God, Jim, you know what effect you got on people. You think I'm immune?"

"You act immune," Jim said quietly, not understanding why this mattered to him, but it did.

"Well, I'm not. I'm not dead, or immune but... I just don't want to lose this. Our friendship, its important to me."

"I understand." Jim did, sort of. He didn't want to fuck this up, either, and if it didn't work, if Bones didn't like it, if they ended up on different ships, all that would be harder to deal with if there was some sort of entanglement, and that's what Leonard McCoy was, in the end. An entanglement. Nothing easy about him. Ex-wife, little kid, his own nasty demons that he didn't discuss. Jim didn't know how to deal with any of that, so maybe it was better, in the end. "Just saying, you're missing out," Jim chuckled, getting back into familiar ground, that safe flirting that never went anywhere.

Bones gave a little laugh at that. "Don't I know it, kid," he smiled back, sitting up quickly. So quickly, he didn't see Jim getting up at the same time and their heads crashed together. "Ouch," Bones moaned, his face so close to Jim's that Jim could feel the slight stubble on Bones' face against his cheek.

That sensation, something so simple and sharp, along with the scent in his nose, familiar and warm, Bones' scent - cologne and sweat and a stale medical tang- made his breath stop as his eyes caught sight of Bones' slightly parted lips. Instinct, was that was it was? Something took over, and it was nothing to move a fraction of an inch and catch that full bottom lip in his own and taste it.

Jim closed his eyes, surprised at how time seemed to slow down. His heart was beating loud in his chest as he blinked his eyes open just in time to see Bones closing his hazel ones. Thick lashes fluttered as Bones' hand reached around Jim's head and pulled them closer, deepening the kiss, the words of their conversation forgotten.

Jim felt their tongues slide slow together and he groaned a little at the sensation of it all. He was kissing Bones, _really kissing him_ , and it was everything and nothing like he'd expected when he imagined this happening between them. Jim had stumbled into making that first move then somehow surrendered himself up to this amazing kiss, to Bones' hands cradling his face as they moved that much closer to each other.

Everything else was a blur. Jim didn't know what happened next, how long it lasted, just that it was the sweetest kiss he'd ever had and he fucking didn't want it to end. But Bones' comm device went off, a quiet series of beeps, immediately followed by Jim's. They pulled away from each other quickly, both looking unsettled as they read their identical messages.

 

Starfleet cadets: All cadets are hereby ordered to report for Assembly at 0900 tomorrow morning. [2258.42]

 

"Guess the practicum's being postponed," Bones murmured to himself, flipping his communicator closed and putting it back in his pocket. "I should get back home, anyway."

"Yeah, me too." Jim sat up, following Bones' lead and heading back to the bike. "I wonder what that assembly's about, anyway."

Bones didn't answer, just shrugged to himself and climbed on the bike. The ride back was quiet, comfortable despite what had just happened between them. Jim's mind was buzzing a million miles a minute but all under the surface. Had to keep it cool, all the way back to Bones' dorm room, where he parked and watched as Bones got off and started walking away.

But something wasn't right... couldn't end it tonight like this.

"Hey." Jim got off the bike and walked towards Bones, who turned back toward him. "We're good?" Jim asked, keeping his voice low, trying to look casual and failing.

"Yeah," Bones said, trying to look just as normal as he could. "Look, Jim, I-"

"Shh. Don't worry 'bout it." Jim didn't want to hear that it was a mistake, didn't want to know that Bones was sorry for it, that it shouldn't have happened. It was a precious memory he'd tuck away inside his head, with the other precious few that stayed with him. "Meet me by old Zephram's statue in the morning? We can sit together, go get some late breakfast afterward."

Bones nodded. "Okay. 'Night, Jim," Bones said, that worried look back on his face. "And congratulations 'bout today." Bones dropped his hand on Jim's shoulder, a familiar touch. "You did a hell of a thing there, kid."

The hand on his shoulder felt _right_ , no matter what they'd said to each other. "Night, Bones. And- thanks for being with me today. No one ever-" But Jim stopped, not sure how he wanted to finish that sentence.

Bones looked surprised, but didn't step back as Jim moved closer and gave him a peck on the cheek. Instead, he flushed, that color evident even in the dim light of the dormitory, and before Bones could say anything else, Jim took two steps backward and left, heading home feeling like he'd passed two important tests today.


End file.
